Saint of Killers wrote:I can't believe it's been 5 years since it was announced

It just shows you how complex games have become to develop and why they can cost $100m to make. Just paying lets say 20 people for 5 years is going to cost quite a bit and that's before you factor in office and equipment costs and now they're on this with everyone after finishing Witcher 3 I'm assuming they have a lot more than 20 people.

New details on the upcoming CD Projekt RED developed RPG have surfaced, strangely enough from an interview held [via Spanish newspaper El Pais] between Vodafone and Mike Pondsmith (the man who wrote the pen-and-paper RPG Cyberpunk 2077 will be based on).

Pondsmith has spoken about how there’s going to be a new trailer soon, and how it will showcase the more grizzly and gritty aspects of the game, such as “how much death” there is in Cyberpunk’s dystopian setting. As per Pondsmith, making the game has only become possible thanks to new technologies that let the developers portray the living and breathing setting of the game. Pondsmith also goes on to talk a little bit about the story’s backdrop itself, wherein the common population of the world is using new and advanced technologies to fight back against the people on top of the food chain.

You can read the full translation of the interview over on Reddit– there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, so consider giving it a read.

Many of the things that we have talked about, have been designed thinking about what we could do in the next 30 years, I am surprised how close we have come. Cyberpunk is basically focused on how the street and ordinary people use technology to fight against those who rule, that is, the big companies, the people with power, those at the top.

Technology is the tool. Technology allows you to do things that put you on the same level as those that have power. This means that the things that were only accessible to the rich and powerful are now accessible thanks to technology, to people who are not of that 1%. In fact, we were proposed to make a video game about Cyberpunk, from 86 or 87, but there were two problems. One was that technology did not exist, it was too hard for us to do it. For example, I worked in a game called Matrix online and we had to force the technology to do the streets. As it would be a Cyberpunk world if we cannot create crowds and recreate streets and vehicles and all that kind of things, it was impossible. The second reason was that as technology was becoming so accessible we had to find someone who had the same idea and the same vision about the world.

You will see how much death there is throughout the trailer. There are things in the windows, reflections, things in the newspapers, scattered under the shattered bodies, things like that. These are things that cannot be completely told in a conventional video game because they come from the imagination of the game master. So many of the things that people will see or I hope, is what I would have seen if I were directing the game and they will see just as I imagined the scene would be.

When I wrote Cyberpunk, there were sections in which we focused on talking about the floods because of climate change and at that time we thought it was not possible for it to happen. It will be very interesting because the problems that I was inventing or extrapolating to the game will become the main problems in 20 or 30 years.

What will happen when the artificial intelligences you spoke of in the game begin to control things?

How do we design them so that they focus on common interests and not on their own interests?

How do we find meaningful jobs for people that do not dedicate themselves to living life and becoming human shells?

These are things that we must deal with in the end our future will be a Cyberpunk world. I hope we are smart enough to avoid it and to think that it is actually possible. So, fight for your future if you want to have it.

Game will seemingly be at E3, with what they’re showing at E3 being announced just before. Said they didn’t want to confirm yet.

The campaign is singleplayer and very expansive, and will be the first thing they show.

It sounds like the multiplayer might be added post launch, but they don’t want to talk about it yet. Everything is on the table in regards to it, including Battle Royale modes. This makes sense as they did a lot of the multiplayer staff hiring more recently, so they might need more time to finish that.

To be clear about the above, an investor asked if the multiplayer would be a Battle Royale mode, and they said anything and everything was on the table, so you shouldn’t necessarily assume it’s a Battle Royale mode. They’re probably still deciding what all the components are, but judging by their job postings, half the multiplayer design team was just hired (which seems to be led by Krakow, who did the DLC for The Witcher 3).

Edit: I listened to the comment about multiplayer on the video, and I think he might have meant that more in the "First and foremost we're making an epic singleplayer game like The Witcher 3." sense as opposed to "We're releasing the game with only a singleplayer mode at launch.", with the "further extensions" being a reference to offerings beyond what The Witcher 3 had, not literal multiplayer expansion packs or updates. It's possible they intend to launch without multiplayer, but I wanted to make the ambiguity here clear so people aren't surprised if multiplayer is in at launch.

The game has a character creator and you can still pick your class, despite rumors. They reiterated later that the game does not have a predefined character.

The studio can’t officially comment on next-gen as it's not announced, but assured investors their game will scale to it.